26 Top Tools to Help You Crush Online Content Marketing

Since this post was originally published in early 2016, online content marketing tools have changed – a lot.

Some have gone away and others have come into being.

To keep you up-to-date and well informed, I’ve made some changes to this list for you.

Let’s face it, its more competitive out there than ever – and it just keeps getting more so.

And, digital marketing — through content — is still the best, cost effective way to stay competitive and in touch with consumers (your customers).

One reason is that it aligns so well with the way consumers approach purchasing decisions.

Not only is the number of people online growing every day, studies have shown that the majority of modern consumers utilize online research and social media to carry out price and product research before they make their final purchase decision.

It’s important, however, to keep in mind that this resource is primarily intended for PPC use, and to recognize the difference between exact match and broad match options. Also, Google now wants you to be an advertiser to use this tool.

4. SharedCount

Any strategy that involves blogging, articles, or other web copy, the chances are that you’ll want to check on how your content is spreading via “shares” across the web.

If you don’t have social media share buttons to help you with this, you can simply copy and paste your web address into “SharedCount.”

Or, you can use the multi-URL dashboard available to check out a number of different web addresses in one go.

Either way you look at it:

The more you know about the current activity of your content, the more you’ll be able to decide whether you’re moving in the right marketing direction.

Remember, your audience will tell you what content they prefer by which titles they click on and the bounce rate.

5. Content Marketing Institute

The minute you’re ready to get serious about inbound marketing or content marketing, you’re going to need to start gathering resources to ensure that the copy you produce is the best it can be.

The content marketing institute is a good place to start, as they are the part of the reason why content marketing as a strategy has become so crucial over the recent years.

Remember, proper content marketing practice is the thing that saves all web browsers from boring, useless, or trivial copy.

6. SEO Quake

Chances are that if you’re serious about online marketing, you’ve got a browser that you rely upon to help you conduct research, manage your websites, and organize your marketing schemes.

Now:

SEO Quake is an extension that can be added to Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Chrome, and it gives you immediate access to numerous useful factors such as position, page rank, content age, and so on.

When you visit a site on your browser, you’ll also find that more information becomes available – such as a link to diagnose issues that a page may be suffering from.

7. NinjaOutreach

If you’re one of those types who prefer to get the most functionalities out of your buck, try NinjaOutreach. Why am I recommending this tool?

One. It has all the typical content and lead prospecting features you need. It already has a well-stocked database you can crawl for data, but you can also include live data (the latest data uploaded to Google in real-time) for a more comprehensive search.

Two. So once you’ve done the prospecting bit, the tool can pull contact data for you, and you can go straight to email outreach, all while using the same platform. And — here comes the fun part — you can even manage communication history with the leads you reach out to, so it’s like a whole CRM system on top of prospecting.

What else? You can also manage email campaigns from here, all while monitoring the most trending topics, most shared pieces, and most influential people from within your niche. As I’ve written before, getting in front of the influencers in your niche is a key to success.

Sounds like a lot for the price of one doesn’t it?

Give it a try and let me know how you liked it.

8. MOZ (SEOmoz)

Known better as “SEOmoz”, MOZ offer a number of great tools for sprucing up your content, especially when it comes to ensuring that content ranks well for your chosen set of keywords or phrases.

This website is brimming with useful blogs …

Topics such as “The Beginners Guide to SEO” which should give you a grasp on the kind of content marketing strategies you’ll need to use.

Moz also offers a tool bar, similar to SEO Quake, that can be added to your browser’s tool bar.

I use it in Firefox and am very pleased with it.

9. Majestic SEO

This tool is less about promoting your own SEO, and more about picking apart your competitor’s backlinks.

Yes, you need to do that.

You need to see how they’re getting their audience members to keep coming back.

Knowing how your competitor does things, can help you with your own marketing.

Here’s the best part:

Majestic SEO offers a number of useful tools, from resources that help you compare a number of different competitors to find the best strategy, to options that help you seek out niche link hubs.

There’s even a tool that can allow you to break down individual domains to build up thorough and specific data about someone you may suspect is stealing some of your target market.

10. The Web Developer Toolbar

Effective online marketing isn’t just about SEO, social media, and content marketing.

It’s also about making sure you have a reliable website to draw your audience towards.

11. Ahrefs

Yet, it is really much more than that. It is one of the key tools I rely on to analyze and keep track of competitors for clients and myself. It helps me to put together a holistic picture of a web property.

One of my favorite aspects to Ahrefs is that it ranks websites based on backlinks — where the real SEO juice comes from.

So, if you want to know where your competition is getting its backlinks from, use this tool to get that answer quickly.

12. Internet Marketing Ninja’s Onpage Optimization

Introduced by the Internet Marketing Ninjas, this free and effective on-page optimization tool is a one-stop-shop for a number of your page development needs.

All you need to do to make it work is type in your chosen URL and check out the stats that show up about internal and external links, keyword density and more.

What’s the bottom line:

In other words, you get all of the information you could need for boosting your SEO rating one step at a time.

13. Save Publishing

Looking for a quick and easy way to publish quotes from your articles, blogs, and press releases on Twitter?

Save Publishing instantly finds complete passages from your chosen works that you can copy and paste into your Tweets.

In other words, rather than having to come up with new tweetable ways to market your content, you can have a number of handy quotes handed to you instantly.

What’s more, you can even publish the quote to twitter instantly with a single click.

14. Domain Tools

If you really want to get into the nitty gritty:

Another tool intended to help with the behind-the-scenes aspect of your online marketing, Domain Tools provides quick and simple domain information that can prove useful in a variety of situations.

With a couple of clicks, you can find out everything from server details, to server location, registration information, and even some basic data on SEO.

15. Character Counter

If part of your content marketing strategy involves improving your social media presence, then you’re going to have to stick to the rules of your chosen platforms.

For example, with twitter, you’ll need to create posts under 140 characters.

On the other hand, it can be important to craft descriptions and titles within your content that sticks to particular length.

If you’re working with freelancers, it can ensure that you’re informed the moment that work is done, so that you can get posting with new blogs and content as quickly as possible.

17. FollowerWonk

One of the most popular names in the world of social media data is Followerwonk.

It offers a wide range of helpful statistics and pieces of information about posting on twitter at the right time, and with the right impact.

It gets better:

For companies that consider Twitter to be an important part of their social media strategy, Followerwonk also offers the opportunity to compare followers on different accounts, and figure out possible influencers for your target market.

18. Latest.is

Not sure what to post about?

Why not take advantage of a conversation that’s already trending in your chosen market or industry?

Latest.is offers an automatically generated list of the most interesting and exciting links currently trending on Twitter.

19. Wolfram Alpha’s Facebook Report

There are a number of different ways that companies can take advantage of the social media boom.

There is a trend in reaching out to their target market and generating a following of loyal consumers.

People that succeed in content marketing do social platforms well:

Facebook is just one of many solutions, but like any other online marketing strategy- you need to be sure you’re using it right.

Wolfram Alpha’s Facebook report provides a detailed analysis of which tips of day you regularly post, the sort of language you use, the connection you have with your followers, and more.

Update: Please note that Facebook has depreciated the API Wolfram relies on for information. You’ll still get a bunch of useful data, but not on your friends.

20. HubSpot’s Marketing Grader

Need a no-nonsense way of assessing just how valuable your current online marketing strategies are?

Marketing Grader can offer the perfect solution.

Developed by HubSpot, Marketing Grader gives web masters an insight into the complete health of your marketing efforts through a number of different categories, from SEO and lead generation, to blogging, social media, and more.

21. SpyFu

Want to know what your competition is up to?

Search for any domain and see every place they’ve shown up on Google: every keyword they’ve bought on Adwords, every organic rank, and every ad variation in the last 10 years.

You can also learn how to connect with these domains. Find online and traditional leads methods — social media, email, phone, and address.

Once you use SpyFu, you’ll never forget it.

22. Google Trends

If you’re having trouble coming up with new and interesting content to share with your followers, why not start by seeing what they’re already talking about?

Google Trends lets you check out the current trending stories that people are most interested in on the web, as well details about terms specific within your industry.

Thanks for your comment! There are a few places online you can go for quality message boards to find other like minded people. A few I would check out include Reddit and Quora but you might also check out Inbound.org. I spend time on all three.

So do links from Twitter activity now count as search engine
optimisation? I read they help after the Penguin Google algorithm refresh
Had to add you to my weekly website bookmarks, keep up the interesting posts!